food stamps

Category archives for food stamps

In the last few years, a number of political leaders have tried to live on a food stamps budget. Among others Newark Mayor and political heir-apparent Cory Booker and current and former governors of Colorado and Oregon. Some have done so to draw attention to the limitations of food stamps, others with the intent of…

Well, as the republican donnybrooks narrow down, the enemy becomes evident – the American poor. Newt Gingrich particularly dislikes poor folk, especially poor children, because after all, if they were good people they wouldn’t be poor, they’d be working 50 hours a week in some nice sweatshop! Celeste Monforton at The Pump Handle has a…

The USDA indicates that in 2010 there were above 17 million households in the US (out of about 115 million households total) that were food insecure, and had trouble getting enough food on a regular basis. Only 59% of those households, however, received Food Stamps, WIC or School lunches, the three largest US food subsidy…

On Friday, in a move that shocked, truly shocked America, President Obama said that food stamps were more important than Defense. Since this sort of prioritization is one of the fundamental differences between the US extreme right (aka Republicans) and the US center-right (also known as the Democrats), the fact that this caused an uproar…

From Alternet (actual Bill text at site), it turns out that House Republicans have a plan to prevent fighting for labor rights – hunger!: Maybe they’ve got firehoses too! And attack dogs, that would be good. Or maybe they could just shoot them – that’s an old favorite way to disrupt strikes! Much of the…

I was out of town when Zuska posted this piece about trying to feed a family on a food stamp budget, and I’ve been meaning to respond to her suggestion that I might have something to add for a while. The article she builds on is one in which chefs try and come up with…

It is interesting that young and unemployed (two words that are now virtually synonymous) and highly educated folks are using food stamps to buy high quality food – and taking a lot of heat for it. I can understand the visceral reaction that people have, but I also think it is fascinatingly difficult to try…

From Alternet, a good piece on what it really means to be one of the six million Americans with no income at all save food stamps: In March 2009, in the midst of the worst job crisis in at least a generation, Eva opened the last welfare check she will ever receive. She is one…